Equalizer 0.5 focuses on scalability, most notably by adding pixel compounds for fill-rate-bound applications and a 2-4x performance increase during sort-last compositing. The Programming Guide has been extended to 43 pages and covers various new topics. Equalizer 0.5 now uses GLEW to provide easy-to-use OpenGL extension handling in parallel OpenGL applications. The new support for off-screen PBuffers on all platforms opens new use cases for Equalizer-based applications, for example seamless integration for scalability on multi-GPU workstations. Where available, image compression during network transfer has been accelerated using OpenMP.